The author of Feather Crowns examines the girl detective in her various guises--including Cherry Ames, Nancy Drew, and Trixie Belden--in a work first published in 1975 recalling a rural youth spent longing for mysteries. Reprint. UP.

The true story behind the iconic fictional detective is “a fascinating chapter in the history of publishing” (The Seattle Times). An Edgar Award Winner for Best Biography and a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year The plucky “titian-haired” sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930—and eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women’s libbers) to enter the pantheon of American culture. As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers’ lives. Here, in a narrative with all the page-turning pace of Nancy’s adventures, Melanie Rehak solves an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to icon? The brainchild of children’s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over her father’s business empire as CEO. In this century-spanning, “absorbing and delightful” story, the author traces their roles—and Nancy’s—in forging the modern American woman (The Wall Street Journal). “It’s truly fun to see behind the scenes of the girl sleuth’s creation.” —Publishers Weekly “As much a social history of the times as a book about the popular series . . . Those who followed the many adventures of Nancy Drew and her friends will be fascinated with the behind-the-scenes stories of just who Carolyn Keene really was.” —School Library Journal “Sheds light on perhaps the most successful writing franchise of all time and also the cultural and historic changes through which it passed. Grab your flashlights, girls. The mystery of Carolyn Keene is about to begin.” —Karen Joy Fowler

An analysis introducing Mason's nonfiction prose, short stories and novels. Price sheds light on the writer's distinctive style and thematic concerns in her writings about contemporary Western Kentucky.

Girls' Series Fiction and American Popular Culture examines the ways in which young female heroines in American series fiction have undergone dramatic changes in the past 150 years, changes which have both reflected and modeled standards of behavior for America’s tweens and teen girls. Though series books are often derided for lacking in imagination and literary potency, that the majority of American girls have been exposed to girls’ series in some form, whether through books, television, or other media, suggests that this genre needs to be studied further and that the development of the heroines that girls read about have created an impact that is worthy of a fresh critical lens. Thus, this collection explores how series books have influenced and shaped popular American culture and, in doing so, girls’ everyday experiences from the mid nineteenth century until now. The collection interrogates the cultural work that is performed through the series genre, contemplating the messages these books relay about subjects including race, class, gender, education, family, romance, and friendship, and it examines the trajectory of girl fiction within such contexts as material culture, geopolitics, socioeconomics, and feminism.

A Companion to American Gothic features a collection of original essays that explore America’s gothic literary tradition. The largest collection of essays in the field of American Gothic Contributions from a wide variety of scholars from around the world The most complete coverage of theory, major authors, popular culture and non-print media available

From early examples of queer representation in mainstream media to present-day dissolutions of the human-nature boundary, the Gothic is always concerned with delineating and transgressing the norms that regulate society and speak to our collective fears and anxieties. This volume examines British and American Gothic texts from four centuries and diverse media – including novels, films, podcasts, and games – in case studies which outline the central relationship between the Gothic and transgression, particularly gender(ed) and sexual transgression. This relationship is both crucial and constantly shifting, ever in the process of renegotiation, as transgression defines the Gothic and society redefines transgression. The case studies draw on a combination of well-studied and under-studied texts in order to arrive at a more comprehensive picture of transgression in the Gothic. Pointing the way forward in Gothic Studies, this original and nuanced combination of gendered, Ecogothic, queer, and media critical approaches addresses established and new scholars of the Gothic alike.

This collection provides a concentrated sampling of female detective stories from the Old Sleuth serials.

Originally written as the author's dissertation.

A lively exploration of the struggles faced by women in law enforcement and mystery fiction for the past 175 years In 1910, Alice Wells took the oath to join the all-male Los Angeles Police Department. She wore no uniform, carried no weapon, and kept her badge stuffed in her pocketbook. She wasn’t the first or only policewoman, but she became the movement’s most visible voice. Police work from its very beginning was considered a male domain, far too dangerous and rough for a respectable woman to even contemplate doing, much less take on as a profession. A policewoman worked outside the home, walking dangerous city streets late at night to confront burglars, drunks, scam artists, and prostitutes. To solve crimes, she observed, collected evidence, and used reason and logic—traits typically associated with men. And most controversially of all, she had a purpose separate from her husband, children, and home. Women who donned the badge faced harassment and discrimination. It would take more than seventy years for women to enter the force as full-fledged officers. Yet within the covers of popular fiction, women not only wrote mysteries but also created female characters that handily solved crimes. Smart, independent, and courageous, these nineteenth- and early twentieth-century female sleuths (including a healthy number created by male writers) set the stage for Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, and Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, as well as TV detectives such as Prime Suspect’s Jane Tennison and Law and Order’s Olivia Benson. The authors were not amateurs dabbling in detection but professional writers who helped define the genre and competed with men, often to greater success. Pistols and Petticoats tells the story of women’s very early place in crime fiction and their public crusade to transform policing. Whether real or fictional, investigating women were nearly always at odds with society. Most women refused to let that stop them, paving the way to a modern professional life for women on the force and in popular culture.

The literary character of Nancy Drew, created by the Stratemeyer publishing syndicate in the 1930s, has endured for more than eighty years. Successfully solving complicated mysteries, Nancy Drew offered girls the role model of a confident, independent young woman, functioning simultaneously within what was considered appropriate within the sphere of her gender and outside of that sphere in terms of her so-called moxie. Nancy Drew’s portrayal in the books has changed over the years, reflecting changing social norms, becoming a more obedient and less independent in the 1940s as women returned to traditional roles after World War II. Surprisingly, the Nancy Drew of the 1970s and 1980s did not reflect the changes brought about by the women’s movement and instead was transformed into a glamorous, globe-trotting professional private investigator in The Nancy Drew Files. The publishers soon came to their senses and brought back the plucky Nancy of old. In addition to analyzing Nancy Drew as a proto-feminist role model, Lynne Byall Benson provides a comprehensive bibliography of sources that can be used by scholars and teachers.